Crossfitting, Paleoing, and Living in the 918

I’ll be the first to admit, I have a sweet tooth. Scratch that, I have a sweet mouth. When I tell people about it, explaining that is turning into a problem, they usually just roll their eyes and say “yeah right, I’ll show you a sweet tooth.” But I am serious. I would rather forego any meal, breakfast, lunch, dinner, anything for a sweet treat or some chocolate. I don’t care how much fat, how many calories…just give it to me.

Ok, enough of the cookie monster. See what I mean? My fiance has even admitted that he thinks I am addicted to chocolate. Whenever I talk about my chocolate cravings he usually just shakes his head and tells me that there is something wrong with me.

So you are on doing this Paleo thing, you’ve weened yourself off sugar but still feel like you have an inner cookie monster who dying to come out now and then? Well lucky for you, many other Paleo-ers feel the exact same way. And lucky for me I have been able to find great paleo ways to satisfy my sweet tooth without getting a jumbo sized Caramello. (if you don’t know what a Caramello is, for goodness sakes…drop everything right now and go buy one for yourself at the gas station…oh my chocolately caramel goodness) ok…ok. Sorry. I’m back.

Anyways, like I was saying, they are great ways to stick to your eating plan and still enjoy life. This time I tried some muffins, Paleo muffins of course.

Disclaimer: just because a “sweet” is Paleo does not mean you can sit around and eat as much as you want. Moderation is the key. If you are making muffins, make mini muffins instead of regular sized to ensure that you aren’t overdoing it. A lot of these sweet recipes call for some pretty high fat/calorie content foods and if you are trying to lose weight, eating a batch of Paleo Chocolate Chip cookies is going to do more harm than good, whether or not it has gluten or diary in it. So pace yourself.

Ingredients!

I had to alter the recipe a bit due to some nut allergies in our house. So I will put the original recipe here and then in blue put my substitutions. Enjoy!

Paleo Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins

1 1/2 cups almond flour (I used 1 cup coconut flour)

3/4 cup puree pumpkin (you can used canned, but make sure to get just plain pumpkin and not pumpkin pie filling) (I added a bit more, about a cup)

I am very happy to announce a new blog that I am excited and honored to be a part of: Hot Dish Health! A few of the ladies past and present that were/are a part of Crossfit Jenks decided to get together and write about something we are constantly talk about: staying and eating healthy. We found ourselves talking about food and nutrition 24/7. Every time we saw each other we would bring up new things we learned, recipes we tried, or lament about what we “accidentally” ate that weekend. We found that most of us were in a struggling battle to find balance between eating healthy and becoming obsessed.

Finally one day our Hot Dish Nicole decided that if we were all feeling the same way about food, how many other people in the world were having the same daily struggle? Enter: Hot Dish Health, a forum to talk about those struggles, get feedback from loyal readers like you and a place to start the conversation that no one wants to have but we all obsess over. So I hope you can find some useful information in both of these blogs, Healthy Living in the 918 and Hot Dish Health. Hopefully one post or another will speak to you, give you inspiration or just a much-needed laugh.

If you don’t plan, your planning to fail …

Harsh, I know. I wish I could tell you that this was just some tough love, some kind of psychology intended to piss you off enough to prove me wrong, but it’s true people. If you do not plan you will not succeed. Paleo is hard. No, after the first week of withdrawals and the second week of cravings it is not hard to stick to. What is difficult about this lifestyle change stems from the universe’s inability to understand and therefore aid in your success.

The first time around doing the challenge this was the very first and most important thing that I learned. If your meals aren’t planned out, if you don’t have a contingency plan you will struggle. Paleo is hard to stick to after a 12 hour work day, getting kids to bed, walking the dog, whatever. When you are driving home you start to think about what you can grab for dinner and a flash hits your brain, you have nothing in the fridge but a cucumber and some grape seed oil. Panic ensues. You’re starving, the grocery store is 5 miles in the other direction and it is 10 pm at night. We tend to struggle because in times like these there is no easy fix, no fast food restaurant that you can order something and after some alterations still get a good paleo meal.

You must plan. Spend Sunday planning your meals and making them. If you prepare your food on Sunday then you have nothing to worry in the week when work keeps you late because “Dinner’s Already Ready!” Rejoice! No frantic nights of chomping on a cucumber, no skimping or skipping meals because there is nothing ready. Plan for success and you will find sticking to this lifestyle change is a breeze.

Ok, on to a quick and easy idea. One very frequent and easy meal I like to make for us is Stuffed Peppers! Unfortunately a lot of times beautiful bell peppers (like the red, orange, and yellow ones) are really expensive and I always need at least 4 because my fiance can eat a substantial amount of food. Plus, if you want to have some leftovers for lunch the next day, it’s always good to make a few extras (plan ahead). So luckily for me when I went to the grocery store this week the good peppers were on sale! Hooray! So I stocked up and made them for dinner.

*NOTE- I have cooked this two ways, one browning the meat first and the second stuffing it raw and letting it cook in the pepper. Both ways are good and acceptable but produce two different results. Try both for yourself, my fiance likes when I stuff the meat in the peppers raw and let it cook in the oven that way the turkey cooks together. If you brown it first and cut into the cooked pepper the meat is usually in crumbles making it harder to eat. But it is up to you! Let me know which way you like better!

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Cut a circle around the stem of the pepper and pull out the core w/ seeds. Rinse each one with water to make sure all seeds are out.

Place the peppers into a baking dish

Mix all spices into the meat with your hands and make sure it is good and mixed.

If you want, brown the meat in a skillet and when it is finished put on a plate of paper towels and absorb the extra grease.

Hello friends! Week one of my New Year Paleo Program is over and I have to say I have had much success! Although I have been fairly hungry all week (I think withdrawals from my holiday eating), I have been doing great staying on track. Plus I have become addicted to a great citrus fruit that is in season right now, Cuties! Oh I love them. They are just the perfect snack, portable, delicious, and super easy to peel! I grab a couple for snack and I am set!

Another reason that this go around is a bit easier is because my fiance decided to jump onto the Paleo Bandwagon with me! The first time around when I went through the 6 week Paleo Challenge last spring, I was all by myself. Just me, myself and I, which made it quite a bit harder. Don’t get me wrong, he eats pretty healthy normally, but I still had too easy access to many of my favorite things like cereal, granola, cheese, etc. It was hard when I was in a crunch and had absolutely nothing to eat in the fridge to resist pouring myself a very easy and very satisfying bowl of cereal. But I resisted, made it through the challenge, felt and looked great!

This time I don’t have to worry about any of that stuff. The great thing about him doing this with me is the fact that he is so dedicated. When he decides he is going to try something, he definitely isn’t one to quit. So having a Paleo buddy to eat with has been great! We spend most of our evenings in the kitchen together, cooking, talking sharing our days, making turkey sausage or hard boiling eggs for the next day. Whenever I have a craving for something nonpaleo he keeps me on track. It is great!

So, enough about me. Back to my week! This week was great for renewed inspiration and some great new dishes. I tried to take pictures of a lot of my food so you would have some sort of idea what I was making. So disclaimer, the light in my kitchen is very yellow, therefore casting a yellow-ish tinge to all of my food. I wish I had time to take the photos into Photoshop and make them beautiful like some of the other websites I loyally subscribe to. Alas, I am super busy so what you see is what you get.

Easy Paleo Breakfast Ok, I am a huge proponent for a quick and easy breakfast. I need something I can grab and go without spending an hour prepping something. So Sunday I made some delicious homemade turkey sausage, which is so easy because I can make up a pound of turkey into about 7 sausages and pop them in the fridge until I need them that week. Then in the morning, I reheat them in the microwave, scramble some eggs, and Viola!

Paleo Salad with Cuties!

I am in desperate need of changing up my salads. I needed a new salad that would put the ordinary boring salad to shame. You know the one; lettuce, oil, lemon juice, blah. This time I made a great salad adding a few new ingredients and tossing it with a delicious semi sweet dressing. The salad included baby arugula, cutie slices, dried cranberries and dressing.

Semi-Sweet Salad Dressing (disclaimer I know vinegar isn’t technically Paleo, but eating salads without some kind of dressing is almost unbearable for me, so I had a bit of red wine vinegar. You can easily take the vinegar out and use lemon juice.)

The New Year is here and like every year, each and every tweet and blog post asks, “What are your New Year’s resolutions?” When confronted with this question on the screen I usually turn and hide. I don’t even want to think of resolutions because typically resolutions are the exact things that you DON’T keep in the New Year. Sorry to be Pessimistic Patsy but statistically most people do not keep their resolutions past week 2, and even less after a month.

So what are we to do? Say screw it all to any type of resolution that may help us be better, stronger, healthier, smarter in 2011? No, absolutely not. But when you are making your resolutions think really hard before you set them out. And try to remember these three things:

1. Don’t give yourself too much to do in 2011. Try to focus on one or two resolutions that are manageable and that you could attain at any time in the year, not just the first. There are many grandiose ideas I have for 2011. I want to be fluent in Spanish, I want to do a 100 m handstand walk, I want to eat clean 100% of the time. I want to quilt. Sheesh, I have a lot to do and when I start to look at this long list of resolutions or what I call “wants” for 2011 I start to have a panic attack. How the hell can I possibly attain all of these things starting January 1st. So what did I do? I took a big step back and went over my list, forcing myself to pick one thing I can commit to, only one. Yes, I would love to promise myself that I will do everything on this list and if I can do that, great for me. In all actuality, the new year will hit and I will be so busy with everything else that most of this stuff won’t ever get wings to get off the ground. So my one New Year’s Resolution: Paleo. That’s it.

2. Grab your friends and get going together. Many people say they can hold themselves accountable, and maybe they can. I myself find that I am a lot more accountable when others are relying on me to follow through. So what better way to start the new year than finding a few friends that want to share your goal. This could be eating healthy, working out more, learning spanish, training your dogs, whatever! Just grab some friends and keep each other accountable. Plus, usually this stuff is a lot more fun when you aren’t doing it alone!

3. Don’t hate yourself if you fall back a few steps. January 1st is arbitrary. Yes, it is the beginning of a new year, and a great platform to start new things, but who decided that this is the only day of the year when you can start a program to make yourself better? Exactly, no one. Janaury 10th is just as great of a day as January 1st, and February 20th is good too. So if you decide January 1st holds too much pressure to get your butt into gear then give yourself a week to get started. The main idea is that you start, and if you fall off the wagon just make sure you brush yourself off and get back on, immediately. Don’t focus on the fall focus on the future goal and most of all make sure you are having fun.

Happy New Year everyone! 2010 was a great year, here’s to making 2011 even better!

I made the most delicious dinner the other night. As you know from my previous posts, I am trying to spice it up a bit for dinners. This time I went out on a limb and wanted to see if I could find any delicious paleo recipes on Cooking Light. I love their magazine and books and I am usually depressed because they don’t have many dishes that can be considered paleo. But low and behold, this little gem! I couldn’t find a few of the ingredients at my local grocery store so I left them out and it was still just as delicious. The best part?? It was amazing the next day as leftovers!

I think everyone should try it out and I know you will be enticed by the smell as much as the delicious taste. So here it is, enjoy!

I had a delicious paleo meal last night and I must share. I spent the day searching for a good recipe that both my fiancée and I could enjoy. He definitely watches what he eats and works out every day but he isn’t strictly paleo. He still eats grains but ever since I started this paleo diet back in June he has definitely become more conscientious about what he eats. Plus I do the cooking on most nights so he kinda has to eat what I cook 🙂 So, goal for the day, find a new recipe that wouldn’t be too difficult, would work for both of us, and would be different! I am so sick of eating chicken and turkey every single night.

And as I am sure all Paleo junkies do, I have a go to bookmark folder at the top of my browser where I have earmarked great Paleo websites that I have stumbled across in my search for new and exciting recipes. Jumping straight to that folder I began my search. I found a ton of things I could cook but they just didn’t seem right. And then, out of no where I found it, Shrimp! I haven’t cooked shrimp in a coon’s age (ha ha) and I conveniently has a bag of frozen shrimp in the freezer. (No, frozen shrimp isn’t the most ideal choice, but sometimes you have to go with what you have). So, with a few changes and tweaks to the recipe below I had a very delicious paleo meal.

So here it is. Graciously grabbed from Everyday Paleo, hands down one of my favorite paleo websites!

Cut the thawed shrimp in half and set aside. In a skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat and saute the cilantro and bell peppers until tender, add the cherry tomatoes and saute for about 1 minute. Add the shrimp, the spices, and the salsa, mix well and cook just until the shrimp are warm. Serve in the lettuce leaves with sliced avocados and shredded purple cabbage.

About Me!

Christina is a Saint Louis native who received a B.A. from the University of Tulsa and stayed in Tulsa after graduation. Christina was a dancer for 20 years, focusing on all facets of dance including jazz, tap, ballet and competitive pom. She went on to dance at the University of Tulsa and coached/choreographed for various middle schools and high schools in the Tulsa area. Her passion for keeping an active lifestyle continued after college when she joined a gym and began running. She completed her first half marathon in November of 2009 and has run in various 5-10k races in Tulsa. Christina is dedicated to fitness and fell in love with Crossfit in September 2008. The physical and mental strength she has gained since starting Crossfit keeps her wanting more day after day. She has her Crossfit Level 1 Certification and hopes to teach people the benefits and rewards of exercise and healthy eating.